Would Jesus vote green? XI

Fear
The final, perhaps the most common, and I suspect the deepest response for many people when encountering the depth and breadth of the various ecological crises is fear. We can feel helpless in the face of forces that appear beyond our understanding, let alone control. If we take seriously some of the possible predicted scenarios the future can seem bleak and hopeless.

What will happen if oceans rise and millions are forced to flee? What happens if sustained drought leaves millions more hungry? What will happen when we pass Peak Oil, the halfway point of oil extraction – where production inevitably drops, prices skyrocket and the world economy goes into massive recession? What will happen to our supply of food when soil degradation meets population expansion? Will there be wars over access to fresh water? What will happen when the last ancient rainforest is destroyed? How will we cope with knowing we pointlessly exterminated hundreds of thousands of species? And perhaps most worrying: when every river is tainted, every sea is overfished, every wind carries toxins, every non-renewable resource is exhausted, every field eroded, every forest is logged – when we reach that stage, who will we have become?

Once more, there is something right about having a healthy concern for the future. These are questions that need honest investigation and expert consideration. Being Christian certainly doesn’t mean I think that God guarantees us individually or a society against self-destruction. It has happened before. Most historians believe that the native inhabitants of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the Pacific Ocean had a thriving little civilisation until perhaps a hundred years before European discovery. However, in their unthinking growth, they cut down every tree on the island, precipitating a cascade of ecological problems, which in turn decimated their population to a fraction of its original size. There’s no guarantee against self-destruction.
Twelve points for guessing the English town in the picture. Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X; XI; XII; XIII.